Red Kangaroo
The young is guided by its sens of smell
This is the largest of all kangaroos : a large male can reach 1m80 and weigh 85 kg, like an adult human.
It is a mammal (which therefore feeds its young with milk) but it is also a marsupial (therefore the young is born in an embryonic, immature state and continues its development in a pouch, rather than inside its mother’s belly).
After only 33 days, the embryonic young is born, tiny, blind and weighing just one gram!
Undoubtedly guided by its sense of smell, it clings all alone to its mother’s coat and climbs into the ventral pouch where it is able to suckle its mother's milk and stay for a period of eight months. Then, like a second birth, it comes out, leaps for the first time and starts to browse on the grass. But it still regularly returns into that pouch, where it is safe and sound.
A less threatened species
- Name : Red Kangaroo
- Latin name : Macropus rufus
- Origin : East and South-East van Australia
- SIUCN status : Least concerned
- Cites : --